This is the UK400 Club Rare Bird Alert highlighting all records of avian interest and published in association with Rare Bird Alert Pagers and utilising additional information gleaned from the Regional Birdlines, BirdGuides, local email groups and individual observers

Follow by Email

Monday, 10 December 2012

FALCATED DUCK in Oxfordshire

Following the hysteria of the weekend, today was back to normal with a visit to Oxfordshire.....

FARMOOR RESERVOIR (OXFORDSHIRE)

A drake FALCATED DUCK had been discovered yesterday and was still present today. Joan, Mike Campbell, Bill Pegrum and I arrived late morning to find it still performing - showing reasonably well along the north shore of Farmoor 1. The bird is unringed and surprisingly wary, swimming away from the shore at speed at 130 yards range, before any of the Mallards it seems to be associating with (incidentally, of which, there has been a huge Continental influx of in the past month, perhaps due to many small lakes freezing over in the Low Countries and beyond). It is an ADULT drake and perhaps a returning bird, maybe that which wintered in South Devon.

Two different SLAVONIAN GREBES were still present on the reservoir, as well as 3 GREATER SCAUPS, one of which was an odd-plumaged juvenile.

About Me

I have been birding since 1969 but became obsessed with 'twitching' in 1974 and haven't looked back since. Have driven over 1.3 million miles in pursuit of rare birds in the UK, where to date I have recorded 588 species in Britain and Ireland. I also have a fascination for the Birds of the Western Palearctic, where I have currently recorded 880 of the 1,064 species ever recorded. I am widely travelled in North America, as well as in Africa and Asia, and have written at least 29 books on my chosen subject, including best-sellers ''Ultimate Site Guide to Scarcer British Birds' and 'Rare Birds in Britain 1800-1990'. Established the UK400 Club in 1981 to cater for the most obsessive of the British birding fraternity and now concentrate on online publishing, via the www.uk400clubonline.co.uk website. Record Birding achievements include recording 386 species in Britain & Ireland in 1996 and 627+ in the Western Palearctic in 2008